Shadows of the Past
by Pandora North Star
Summary: After Angel's death a grown up Connor goes to Sunnydale to seek answers about his fathers past. Will he find comfort in Angel's Past love?


Shadows of the Past  
By Pandora North Star  
Rating PG  
Summary: After Angel's death Connor sets out to find out who his father really was.  
  
Connor Chase ran his fingers through his long dark brown hair and took a deep breath, before plunging into the dusty basement of the hotel. He gazed around the room, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. He noticed a word scrawled on the beams, and wondered how long ago they had been written there. How many years of grime and dirt lay over them, forgotten messages of a daring soul. Remembering what he came down to do, he headed deeper into the basement.   
At the last moment Connor stopped in front of the small door. He froze, afraid of what lay behind. What secrets were held there for him to dredge up and expose to the light. He didn't want to do this yet. It was t fast, to recent.   
It was strange, the quiet of the basement. He could only hear his own breathing, no sound of his mother or the rest of his family upstairs. The door creaked, as if inviting him and he pulled the key from his pocket. He moved swiftly so he wouldn't freeze up again and ducked in the door.   
On a surprisingly clean table in the center of the small room sat a cardboard box. Connor went over and he grabbed the box, and brought it out, slamming the door behind him. He put the box on the damp floor and coughed from the dust levels. His dad's voice seeped into his head, aching and tough. For everything they never got to have together, everything he never got to know about his father.   
"I miss you so much dad." Connor mumbled as he opened the box.   
"In the basement, everything. I love you son. Know that I will always love you." How many nights had that voice induced nightmares? How many ways had he saved his father, in his dreams. For another night together he would have given his soul. Although his dad would say his soul was his greatest possession. He sliced his finger on the rough cardboard and put it to his mouth, then away, repulsed at the blood. His heart skipped a beat.   
The fridge, he knew, was still full of blood bags, reminding them all of the all to recent passing of Angel. At least he died fighting, as he always would have wanted. A protector to the end.   
Connor pulled out a photo. It was old and a little yellow. It was a picture of his dad and his mom a long time ago. She had long hair, untainted with gray. His mom looked young. He pulled out another, it was a picture of his dad and a blond woman. But it wasn't his birth mother. He had seen pictures of her. It was another blond women. He turned over the frame and released the picture.  
"Buffy and Angel. A rare moment. 1998." God that was about 22 years ago! He put the pictures aside, and reached in again. Looking at them hurt him. His father looked the same then as he did a few days ago. Right before his death. He was an immortal figure in Connor's mind, never touched by age, or the constant trauma that invaded their nightly world. He lived above them all, yet below, tied to humanity. He found more pictures of Buffy. But none of his father. He became infatuated with these pictures. They were all dated before 2000. Who was this woman? What did his father want him to know about her? Why was she special?  
His father and his mother had always been mysterious about their pasts, never seeming to have ties with anything outside of LA. Whenever he tried to ask they would both look at each others, worlds of pain reflected in their eyes and shake their heads.   
"You will be protected from as much pain in this world as I can manage while I live." Was this part of his pain? The pain he didn't want Connor to know?   
His little world revolved around the strange characters that drifted in and out of the hotel. His demonic Uncle Lorne, Gunn and Fred, and the ever single Wesley. But they at least didn't try to hide anything about their lives and who they were. In most cases they went out of their ways to explain how important it was to live a good life, one of meaning.  
"Who is she dad?"  
His hands brushed something in the box that wasn't paper. He pulled it out. A journal. He opened it slowly and looked at the inside cover. "A tale for all ages of love and redemption." Connor was curious. It was handwritten, in his dad's loopy scrawl. He opened to the first page.   
"Hey name was Buffy Summers, and I loved her…" Connor couldn't help but sit there and read. His mom called down to him once or twice, with concern but he yelled back he was busy. He read quickly, becoming enthralled with the account of this love. The book was written when this Buffy Summers died, while Angel was in Tibet. He understood that this girl came back after her death but that the important things happened before. Before he was born.   
He never thought himself a romantic before, but as he read, moment by moment of their star crossed love, he wished it had worked out. He murmured curses when things happened and when Buffy sent Angel to hell. That part startled him. He had never known this. How his dad had turned evil and gone to hell. He knew vaguely how bad his dad was before he became Angel, but they had never mentioned him going evil after. He felt hot tears in his eyes and he rubbed at them angrily. He wouldn't cry. Not for something that was, and couldn't be again. His dad would frown on that. He would tell him to suck it up and keep going, keep trying.   
"Why the lies? Why the deception? Did you think I would love you less?" Connor tore a page accidentally and moaned in horror. His fingers trembled but a force willed him to continue.   
He got to the part where his dad killed the teacher. He could barely continue. The story wasn't in any particular order, it was written as the memories came to Angel, along with his feelings about the time. All the pain, the frustration, the forlorn foreshadowing of a dim future with his blond goddess.   
He could almost feel the pain as his father left Buffy after she graduated high school, something he would be doing that year, and then when he harbored their nonexistent day, the secret torturing him. The accounts ended when she died. Even though he had never met her, as a result of his father's painful secrecy, he felt touched by this death. He felt saddened for the world's lose. But he knew she came back. Because he had mentioned her once, delirious with fever. Who was she? Oh god he had to know!  
Connor felt closer to his father as he read the book than he had his whole life. He had so many questions that had no answers now.   
Connor picked up the box and thundered upstairs. His father had wanted him to see this, to know about his life, at last. His mother, Cordelia was sitting on the couch in the lobby, her face streaked with dried tears. "Hey baby." She crooned beckoning him over. "How did it go down there?"   
"Mom." He acknowledged her. "Is Buffy Summers still alive?" His mom seemed surprised by the question. She looked like she had been prepared for any other question. "Or alive after death, or whatever." Cordelia eased and gave him a small taunt smile.   
"I think she might be."  
"Can I visit her? Please? When I read this journal I felt closer to dad that I ever did." He held the book out to his mother and she took it, slipping her glasses on to read it. "I read about her, why did he never talk about her? If she had such an impact on his life, why? I feel like I never got to know him." Connor stammered. Cordelia held her arms out and embraced him.  
"I think it was too painful for him. I'll find out. I'll call Willow." Cordelia went over to the phone and dialed her old friend in England.   
"Watcher's Council."  
"May I please speak to Willow Rosenberg?"  
"Willow, it's Cordy. Do you know if Buffy's still alive?"  
"Hey. Um she is. I'm sorry to hear about Angel. How's Connor?"  
"Not good. That's why I called. He wants to meet Buffy. He thinks it will help."  
"Sure. She has a new address. Hold on, let me get it." Willow left and then came back to read Cordelia the address.  
"Moving up in the world." Cordelia remarked absently. The address was a few blocks from her own childhood home. "Thanks Willow."  
"It was great to hear from you Cordy. We should get together."  
"We should." Cordelia hung up the phone and looked at it. For a brief moment a memory passed through her mind of her and Willow teaming up against men. Those were the good old days. She was so naïve then.   
"So she's alive? I can meet her?"  
"Yes." Cordelia handed him the address. "This is the town where I came from. It's just as well you finally see it."  
"You aren't coming?"  
"Me? No way. When you leave tomorrow bring some stakes. That town is always overridden with vampires and other evil paraphernalia."  
The next morning Connor set out in the ancient Plymouth and headed south towards Sunnydale. He put the top down, even though it was still spring cool. He wondered what this woman would look like. It had been 20 odd years since those photos were taken. Would he like her? He thought he would. But maybe he wouldn't.   
He popped one of his favorite cassettes into the player, laughing at the ancient technology. He ran his hands through his hair, the wind tossing it into knots. His dad had hated his long hair. But as a tradeoff to keep it, Connor agreed to go to Notre Dame next year. Now he wasn't so certain. Who would take care of his mother? He didn't dare leave her the Three Stooges and Fred. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, letting the beats wrap around him, pound through him, pushing all the emotion away for a moment.   
He got off the highway and cruised into Sunnydale. The town was quiet and peaceful looking. But he knew from his readings and the few things his mother had mentioned about her childhood it was anything but. He found the house and parked the car. He walked up the flagstone walkway and stood on the front steps. He put his hand up to knock and hesitated. Then he knocked sharply, liking the pain that shot up his knuckles. It was real, he was feeling something.   
The door opened and there stood a man, he looked about thirty something. He had floppy blond hair and glasses. "Hello?" He said moving back from the sunlight.   
"Hi. My name is Connor." He started, gazing at the man. "Is Buffy here?" A look passed over the man's face and he nodded.   
"This way."  
"Spike? Who is it?" Connor stopped in a doorway leading from the foyer, deeper into the house. The woman looked almost the same as her picture, only older, more mature. She had deep lines on her face but the same pretty eyes stared back at him. Only they were wet and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. She wasn't dressed fashionably like she had been in the pictures, but a sweatsuit hung on her gaunt frame,   
"Pet. This is Connor." The woman inhaled sharply. So she knew of him.   
"Connor?" She put her hand to her mouth. He stood there awkwardly.   
"My dad left a bunch of stuff for me. I found photos of you and a journal about you and him." He pulled the book from his coat pocket. "I had to meet you."   
"I always wondered…We thought it was best…I prayed for you." She moved towards him, a walking angel with a golden halo of hair. "But you're here now." She took him into her arms and he felt a great catharsis, as if this woman held a key to something that had been missing in his soul.   
"He was very mysterious about his past. I hoped that my meeting you it would help me." He trailed off.  
"And me." She whispered into his ear. Spike touched her shoulder.   
"I'll be in the other room." She pulled away from him, drawing herself together.   
"I got you all wet." She observed, drying her eyes.   
"It doesn't matter."  
"How old are you Connor? The years have always blended for me since I came back."   
"From the dead? I read about it in that book. I'm sorry…I mean I'm 18." She smiled, cupping his face.   
"Don't be sorry. You did nothing to be sorry about." He felt his face blush. "So you're holding up?"  
"Each day it gets a little bit easier. It's so weird. He was there, and he was always my dad, this unchanging entity in my life, and now he's gone." As he felt the key turning inside him it make him want to share with her, everything. Every horrible thought, and every tortured second. He felt she could handle it somehow, that she knew it more than any person ever did.  
"I loved your father so much. He gave me some of the greatest pain and greatest joy in my life. Why don't you come and sit down before we both drown in our own tears." She forced laughter and took his hand. They went into the other room where Spike was sitting.   
"How did you meet my father?"  
"I met him like I met most guys, being the vampire Slayer. He was stalking me and I beat the crap out of him. He watched over me for a time, before we got to know each other. Spike," she nodded to her companion, "Was his grandchilde of sorts."  
"He blazed a path. I only followed." Spike's eyes roamed to Buffy and they shared a private moment. Connor could sense they had been together a long time, worn a groove into love so it was a patterned comfort. He envied it.   
"How did he go evil? The book never explains why. It only talks about how tortured he was when he got his soul back, remorseful for what he had done."  
"Well um," Buffy started. "How old are you again?"  
"18."  
"We made love." Connor shuddered. Ew. "And a moment of true happiness, then he was Angelus." She looked down, fiddling with her hands, and a claddagh ring on one hand. Connor noticed it. She noticed him noticing it.  
"Your father gave it to me. I thought it right that I took it out of my jewelry box and wear it, for his sake." The vampire Spike, Connor was surprised, didn't seem at all jealous or upset by her love of his father. He guessed this man had felt love like theirs also, in times past.   
"Where was I? When he came back, we tried to make it work, but it never did. So he left. Went to LA."  
"And the rest is the unhappy ever after." Connor snapped, not at her, but rather her ill fortune.   
"It isn't as bad as all that, is it? You were happy for a time, right?"  
"I guess." Connor shrugged. "My dad did the best he knew how. I always had whatever I wanted. But sometimes- sometimes I just wished for one night without vampires, without stakes and without having to play night games." She smiled at his last comment, but quickly sobered.  
"I wished for that too. God, if you only knew. But all of us," She gestured to him, Spike, and herself, then to the ceiling, "We weren't meant for that kind of life. You're special Connor, don't forget it."  
"I know. Miracle child. You're gonna give me a big head." Connor, realized as they started joking, he was feeling better. There was something about this woman that made the world fall away, and ease pain. "I should get going. I need to be back."  
"You know, anything you need, come back." Buffy stood up. "I mean it. Don't be a stranger."  
"I couldn't even try." Connor found his way back into her open arms. "You saved me."  
"I know." Connor closed his eyes, breathing her in, this woman made of heaven. "May I call you mother?" The question surprised both of them. She was the mother he was meant to have, he could feel it.   
"How about Aunt Buffy?"   
"Goodbye." She let him go and he made his way through the house, leaving behind some of his peace. Spike let him out with a friendly smile. But some of the peace, it remained. He could feel some of the doors, filled with questions, shutting, keeping bits of the peace within him.   
He now knew the secrets of his father, the mystery, the champion, and he could begin to heel. 


End file.
